Abstract
Abstract The Dutch glasspainter and Anabaptist prophet David Joris (1501–1556) was the Netherland’s most infamous heretic who became a spiritualist who depreciated the scriptures, condemned confessional conflict, and argued that the devil did not exist external to a person’s mind. Unlike the Dutch founder of the Family of Love, Hendrik Niclaes, Joris had no following in England, yet English writers condemned him with increasing frequency over seventeenth century. This paper examines that response, showing that for most writers Joris was the exemplar of the dangers of visionary mysticism, while Catholics used him to condemn Protestantism in general. English writers remained largely unaware of Joris’s denial of demons until ca. 1647, when they began to attack the idea, unintentionally publicizing it. Such polemical dissemination had decades earlier helped to calm fears of demonic witchcraft in the Dutch Republic; in England it may have also influenced the demonologies of some English nonconformists.
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